A massive cyber-attack that affected popular Australian websites on Saturday has prompted Wagga hacker Daniel Winson to warn people about beefing up their security.
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A key part of the internet’s infrastructure was hit by WikiLeaks supporters after founder Julian Assange’s internet connection was cut, causing major services such as Netflix, eBay, banking and news sites to be inaccessible for many users.
Mr Winson, who is also an IT teacher at Wagga TAFE, said it was a harsh reminder of the need for good IT security both at home and in the workplace.
“Businesses really need to engage managed service providers and professionals to make sure they’re up to minimum standards,” Mr Winson said. “Make sure you also run updates on all your internet-connected devices. Most importantly, don’t reuse passwords – if you use the same one for Facebook and PayPal and hackers get their hands on them, you’re in strife.”
The attacks hit Dyn, a company that helps people get to websites, with a huge amount of traffic in an attempt to knock it offline.
By Sunday morning it appeared hackers infected routers, printers, smart TVs and other connected devices with malware that turned them into “bot” armies that overwhelmed Dyn servers in three waves of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
According to Mr Winson, the increasing number of internet-enabled devices also increased the risk of hackers exploiting them.
“These devices, known as the internet of things, are similar to computers in that they have the capacity to send traffic to any location a hacker has control of,” Mr Winson said.
“With the number of these devices growing, we need to learn how to manage that risk.”
Last month, a similar attack method was used on American tech journalist Brian Krebs, which resulted in 77GB of data being sent to his website every second.